Columns

Steve Wasserman, a director of literary agency Kneerim & Williams at Fish & Richardson and manager of its New York office, is a former editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review and a principal architect of the annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, from 1996 to 2005. Before joining the...

Most Recent

When, exactly, to give him the bad news? Before our interview? That would spoil the conversation. Lunch would be best. But when, exactly? Before the first course, during the meal, or ought I to delay until dessert?

Posted on Jun 2, 2012

Lesley Blanch’s “The Sabres of Paradise” tells the illuminating story of Shamyl, the Imam of Daghestan, whose 25-year fight against the Russian empire left a half-million dead, and lessons still to be learned in wars from Chechnya to Afghanistan.

Posted on Mar 5, 2010

What will history say about the implacable anti-imperialist and unrepentant revolutionary who has held power in Cuba for nearly 50 years? The publication of Fidel Castro’s and Ignacio Ramonet’s “My Life: A Spoken Autobiography” helps us understand the man and his myth.

Posted on Apr 10, 2008

We got snookered. Motoko Rich of The New York Times reports in her article posted March 4 that the just-published “memoir” by Margaret B. Jones, called “Love and Consequences,” about Jones’ “life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods,” is a fabrication.

Posted on Mar 3, 2008

Although coverage of books in major newspapers may seem to have taken a precipitous downturn in recent months, this decline has been in the works for a while, says longtime writer, literary editor and book aficionado Steve Wasserman, who opines in this CJR article about the high costs of this lamentable cultural sea change.